Thursday, May 30, 2013

Blues and conversations

I was listening to the radio, and they played this blues song called, “The Blues Can’t Even Find Me.” So, essentially, this blues singer was sad about not being able to get depressed. Mission accomplished! You did it! The next track on his album should be called “Never mind”

His life must just be a crazy emotional roller coaster.

“I’m pretty bummed out that I can’t depressed”

“Wait! I’m depressed! Hooray! Now I can write a blues song!”

“Oh wait! Now I’m happy! Crap! I can’t even get depressed right!”

“Oh, now I’m depressed again! Yes!”

At least this guy had some sort of emotional response to things. Recently, I’ve discovered that my general lack of emotion makes me terrible at conversations. Sometimes, people say things to me, and I have no idea what they expect me to say.

I got my car inspected the other day and the people at Jiffy Lube found some rock chips in my windshield and fixed them. Apparently, there’s a lot of fraud in the windshield repair industry so in order to bill my car insurance, they have to get you on a call with your carrier so you can explain that you’re actually getting your windshield fixed.

So, I get on the phone with the insurance lady and she says,

“We’re sorry to hear about your glass damage. “

Pause…

I realize….she’s waiting for a response from me.

What am I supposed to say? “Yeah I’m pretty torn up about it.”

Maybe if a family member had died I might be able to provide you with a more emotional response. Like if a some debris went through the windshield and impaled my dad I could maybe say something back. But if that were the case, I’d probably be a little upset you said, “I’m really sorry to hear about your windshield damage.” Rather than something… you know… about my dad.

Anyway, I didn’t know what to say, so I just filled the pause by describing the process of how windshields get chips in them.

“Yeah, I was driving on the highway and rocks got in my windshield. And you know how rocks leave chips in your windshield when they hit your windshield? Yeah, that’s what happened to me. But you know how that works right?”

I work as a teller, and this lady comes up to me and says,

“Hi, my name is Helen”

Pause.

“I’m from Wyoming”

Pause.

“I’m in farming.”

Pause

“I make hay in the summer. That’s why I’m here”

Pause

“It gets 16 below in the winter”

It was the most random conversation I’d ever had. I’m just getting barraged by non sequiturs to the point that I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. When I’m just about to make a comment, she changes topics on me! “I make hay!” “It gets to 16 below!”

But, once I thought about it, apparently I’m so bad at conversation that she just went on and filled in my part of the conversation for me. This is kind of scary because I don’t know what I’m saying. But once I thought it through I figured out that she thought that I was a super inquisitive person; almost to the point of being obnoxious. I was asking all sorts of random questions. My end of the conversation was

“WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DO YOU HAIL FROM! WHAT IS YOUR OCCUPATION! FARMING? WHAT KIND OF FARMING? WELL WHY ARE YOU HERE DURING THE WINTER? WHAT TEMPRERATURE DOES IT GET TO DURING THE WINTER?” Are these the questions I’m supposed to be asking?